The Earth is Made of Glass
by Katja1
Summary: There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass." –Emerson. (LK, KA)


Disclaimer: Not mine.  
Spoilers: A Trip to the Dentist, Leave It to Beaver.

Sometimes, her skin feels like it's a size too small. That's when she gets the urge for going. 

In rehab, the itch is always there, because they got everything useful out of the way in the first couple of days and now they spend the rest of the time repeating themselves. The other addicts are total losers, real hard cases; this is not the place for Lianne Mars, former prom queen, wife, and mother. (Lianne Mars, blackmailer, liar, and whore fits right in, though.) 

She calls them one night, after hours. 

"Hello?" 

She bites back the urge to ask Veronica why she's up this late on a school night. That's not her place anymore. "Veronica?" she asks instead, pretending the reception is worse than it is. (Tin cans on a string, second-grade Veronica, shouting at her from the bedroom like she's Alexander Graham Bell: "Come here, I want you.")

"Mom? What's wrong?"

"Nothing, everything's great. How are you?"

She's quiet. "I don't think you're supposed to be doing this."

"I need to talk to your father," she says, trying to make it sound important. 

Another pause. "He's not here," Veronica finally says.

"I'll call his work number, then." She mentally counts the silver change in her pocket. "Have a good night, Veronica. I'll--"

"He's not at work."

Oh. "Is he traveling?"

"No." Veronica's voice turns soft again. "Are you calling because of the notice?" 

Goddamn him. "I have to go, sweetheart, I'll see you soon."

She doesn't sleep that night.

"I didn't know where else to go," she says. "If you don't want me to stay, I can--"

"It's fine." He steps aside to let her in. "For a couple of nights, until you find something else."

She nods, setting her bag on the floor. "I understand." 

The room falls silent. He sits in the chair he always preferred, and she sits on the couch. Their knees almost touch.

"How--" she starts, at the same time he says, "Where have you been?"

So he doesn't know. "Getting sober," she says. 

"Did it work?" he asks, impassively.

"Yeah. I needed to be away for a while. It was good for me, in a lot of ways," she says. "Helped me rearrange my priorities." 

"That's good." She watches him swallow something else, and makes her move, getting closer, grasping his arm. But he's the one who speaks first.

"Is she mine? I'm getting a test done, but I want to hear it from you."

"Yes," she says. "Of course she is, Keith; she's You, Junior now."

He nods. "The results should come back pretty soon."

She tries again. "Keith, I did a lot of stupid things, and I ran from you when you needed me to stay"--here she lets her voice crack, just enough--"but I'm here, and I'm sober now. For good. And--"

He takes a deep breath. "I filed for divorce." 

"I know. I heard." Pause. "You want me to sign the papers?"

"We don't have to talk about it tonight," he says.

The door opens.

She wakes up on the couch in time to catch a glimpse of Veronica leaving for school. She checks the bedroom and the shower; Keith's already gone, too. The note is on the kitchen table, with his work number printed neatly across the bottom. She feels like a guest, and she has no one to blame but herself, so she doesn't bother. 

Instead, she turns on the television to stop herself from thinking.

He comes back at lunchtime, during the climax of iKey Largo/i. "I usually do," he explains as he makes himself a sandwich. "It's less expensive if I don't go out for lunch. Also, fast food rots your insides, so I don't like to eat it every day. I didn't always think so, but there was this movie we saw last year--" He stops talking. "You want one too?" he calls. 

When they make love for what will be the only time during her brief return, he holds her so tightly she swears she hears her bones creak beneath the pressure. But she doesn't protest; it's nice to be wanted. 

I'm sorry, she does not say.

I still love you, he does not reply.

Afterward she takes a shower while he watches from the doorway, as if he's trying to make sure she doesn't climb out the window. 

You could hear a pin drop in the apartment except for the running water, and the early-afternoon sun filters in through the glass. She's content. "Want to come in?" she asks. 

He just shakes his head. And he waits. 

Lianne hears the door lock from the outside.

She sits on the couch with wet hair. iKey Largo/i is over. Now they're running iThe Maltese Falcon/i.

"Great," she tells Backup, who eyes her warily. "I married Sam fucking Spade." 

She remembers her own father, watching Bogart on channel 59 after everyone went to bed. Once in a while she'd stay up for a while and keep him company. But she hates these old movies. They all end the same way. The bad girl never wins, no matter how much the good guy loves her. She shuts off the television and drinks until she hits her limit, then spends the afternoon staring at the blank screen and waiting until she can sit up without wanting to vomit.

Veronica comes home right on time, maybe a little early. Probably wanted to see if she'd still be there. Lianne smiles like a mom when Veronica comes in, watches her tiptoe across the floor like one false step will shatter the illusion that her family is whole again. Veronica disappears into her room for a few minutes, then comes back in and heads for the kitchen without a word. Lianne turns the TV back on. 

"We need some stuff at the grocery store," Veronica says carefully. "Is there anything you want?"

"Why don't you pick up some stuff for tacos?" Lianne suggests, as if the past year never happened. "That'd be nice."

Veronica smiles. "Why don't you come with me?"

So she does.

Veronica bites a spoon. Keith turns the radio to the right station. Lianne watches her husband and her daughter wash the dishes. She sleeps in her own bed that night, and the divorce papers are not mentioned again.

They're gone all the time, and when they are there, they speak to each other in hushed tones she can barely hear through the walls. Now that the novelty of her presence has almost worn off, Veronica types furiously late at night and Keith flits off to God-knows-where overnight (alone?) and only calls her as an afterthought, if at all. She idly wonders where he was that night she called, and carefully looks through some papers on his desk for a clue, but nothing conclusive turns up. 

So she spends her time sleeping beside him when he's home, and watching television when they're at work and school. Occasionally she cleans, out of boredom, and sometimes, in the afternoon, she'll even cook. Figuring out how much to make is pretty difficult when no one bothers to let you know whether they'll be home or not, but she's in no position to complain. The refrigerator fills with leftovers.

Sometimes, her fingers itch to pick up the phone. 

The thing about Keith is that he needs her. The thing about Jake was that he didn't.

She'll be a good girl. She won't call. She'd even settle for a chance to rattle Celeste's chains, but she remembers something she learned in rehab: Wanting something is not the same thing as needing it to survive.

(Maybe he's testing her.)

So she keeps one hand on the bottle and the other on the remote.

And she waits.

"Uh, hi," the woman says, looking Lianne up and down. 

"Can I help you with something?" It's a good thing you came early, she does not say.

"Are you Lianne?"

She doesn't respond, just stares the woman in the eye until she speaks again.

"I'm Alicia."

Lianne raises her eyebrows. And?

"Can I come in?"

"What is this about?"

"It's about Keith."

Oh. She's awfully tall, Lianne notes. "Are you seeing him?" She pictures Keith standing on tiptoes.

"Not anymore. That's what--"

Lianne smiles slightly. "Then I don't see any point in continuing this conversation." She starts to shut the door.

"Just don't--" Alicia pauses. "Don't fuck him over again," she finishes abruptly, and Lianne tries hard not to take pleasure in her defeated tone. She closes the door firmly, and locks it from the inside this time.

Veronica's stronger than both of her parents put together. Lianne's almost proud when her daughter kicks her out, but the pride doesn't wash away all of the irritation. She could have pulled the mom card and stayed, but it's clear that Veronica needs to understand how this will end if it's the route she chooses to take.

Sixty miles later, she'll congratulate herself on being smart enough to grab the check. She left him a note, explaining the situation in her own words, but that wouldn't have been enough to put him back on her trail. This year's cashier's check is last year's threatening photographs, she supposes. 

She would have taken Veronica last time, if she'd wanted to come. She made her choice then, no matter how hurt she looks about it all now. They could have started over together, and Keith would have found them, and she could have explained, and it would have worked out right in the end. But she does have Veronica to thank for her second chance, so it wasn't a total disaster.

Maybe she should have been braver and stayed, back then. Maybe she should have fought it out with Celeste, told the truth, bought a gun, slept with one eye open. Leaving only made things worse; now there's no room for her there, between them.

But Keith needs her. He'll come looking. If she's not enough, there's always the matter of the money. 

He'll have to track down the money, because that's something Veronica needs to survive. Lianne is counting on that.

And when he comes for her, she'll change his mind again. Then she'll stay, and Veronica will leave for college like she planned. She'll be a good girl, she'll work hard, and the past will fade away. He'll remember why he loved her way back when, and she won't want to leave.

But that picture's much too pretty. 

More likely, he'll track her like any other thief, and force her to hand over what's left of the money by the time he gets there. He won't look at her, but his voice will be thick with betrayal and self-loathing. She'll apologize, over and over, and explain it seven different ways. He'll leave her there to rot on $500 a week with only her own company to console her at the end of the day. Because he could have handled having an alcoholic wife, he could have helped her through that or just ignored it like before, and he might even have forgiven her for the infidelity if she'd repented enough. 

But he can't handle sleeping with the woman who would sell out his daughter without remorse. Veronica will win, because she'll always be his, by blood or otherwise. Lianne will just be a girl he used to know who went sour somewhere along the way.

(He wants Lianne. He needs Veronica to survive.)

No. He needs her. He needs the money. He'll show up. He'll know she only took it to give him a good reason to follow her. And he will.

She just has to know for sure.

So now she's in the desert again, a different one. A couple of hours closer to Neptune this time, just north of Los Angeles. It almost smacks of desperation, but he won't read it that way. She cashed the check on her way out of L.A. and the money paid for a motel room, a used car she picked up cheap because it was imported from Florida (which means the parts inside are so weighted down with rust they barely function), and two weeks spent looking for a job. 

Now she spends her days taking dictation and plotting the story she'll tell when he finally tracks her down: Why Lianne Had To Leave, volume 347. She spends her nights at the bar down the block with the girls from work whose names she never remembers, because she can't face quiet nights with takeout on a thin mattress and the eight channels her $150 a week pays for. She keeps it light most of the time--so maybe rehab wasn't a total waste of time--and sticks to Coronas, one after another, straight on til 2am. Every Saturday night she goes home with the first sucker who buys her a beer, and every Sunday she sleeps in her motel bed until the sun goes down.

She checks off the days on her desk calendar, and she waits. 

This time the bad girl's going to win if it kills her. 

(Maybe, if she's lucky, he will.)

And she waits. 


End file.
